Lessons from how I create

Me with my instruments

In my first blog post, I wrote that this blog will be about the process of making music, the inspiration and backstory, and album reviews. I vowed to make it non-technical, so that it would not become a blog for musicians, but for music lovers. So it’s only appropriate to start with that: why do I create, and how can you learn form it?

From an early age on, I have been creating melodies since I was a small child, think 4 or 5 years old. And this behavior of creating melodies became stronger and from there came the need to make these real. That’s where my first guitar came in. At age 14 I got my first guitar, a red Stratocaster type guitar from the brand Aria. However, it proved to be very hard (for me, at least) to make these melodies real songs. Not only was I not yet adept in translating what I heard to guitar, but there is more needed to create a full song. The problem was of course how to get there, but these problems are for another post. In any way, after a few years of practice I got to the point that I am right now able to play what I hear in my head. But at some point in time, I forgot why and how I started out.

In the early ages of adulthood (post 18) I tried to create songs, but my approach wasn’t right. Sometimes I may have started with what I heard in my head, but didn’t end with it. That is what went wrong in the early days. As a musician, it’s for me too easy to get lost in technical stuff, instead of taking a step back to listen and feel where it needs to go. So that is the main lesson from this experience and that is how create new music. I translate from what I hear in my head and try to make that reality. And once I have that melody playing, I try to let it run and develop where I feel it needs to go. It’s hazy advice, but it is what it is for now. Along the way, it will become clearer once I write down the process how a particular song was written.

Stay tuned!

Owl Screech